January 19, 2006 Issue                                               

©2005 The Chestnut Hill Local

Isolation and loneliness at Chestnut Hill’s ‘Bus Stop’
by HUGH HUNTER

Bob Bauer and Faith Hess are seen in rehearsal for Bus Stop at Stagecrafters. The box office opens 45 minutes before each performance. For reservations call 215-247-8881 or visit www.thestagecrafters.org.

This past Friday, Stagecrafters openedits production of Bus Stop. Directed by Marilyn Yoblick, the William Inge play debuted in 1955 to critical acclaim.

A March blizzard forces an unlikely collection of drifters to spend the night together at a roadside Kansas diner. The set design (Kirk Paul) is evocative. Snow swirls outside the rear window, as blizzard winds roar. The café counter is tucked off on stage left, while the potbellied stove, table and chairs complete the sense of a cozy diner that tries its best to give people warm refuge from the storm.

But the lives of the travelers and townsfolk alike are so turbulent , they seem too big for the place. One by one we learn of their inner turmoil, enough to know that the bus stop will be only a way station and any solace the passengers may achieve will be hard won. Everyone is either “on the road” or unhappily at home.

At the center of the action are a cowpoke and a chanteuse. Bo Decker (James Kenis) is a young rancher who is returning to his Montana spread. While in Kansas City, he met night club singer Cherie (Rebecca Cox). With bumptious aggression, he virtually kidnaps her into boarding the bus and vows to marry. Cherie, a rube from the Ozarks with long experience in being mistreated, is alternately repelled and attracted. Working well together, Kenis and Cox bring out the pathos and comedy of their shared situation.

While this conflict takes center stage, a number of other “relationships” brew in the background. Dr. Lyman (Robert Bauer) is a middle-aged alcoholic and an ex-professor with a shady past.. Somewhat supercilious and fond of spouting Shakespeare, he cozies up to the naive teenager, Elma (Faith Hess). At the same time, the owner of the diner, Grace (Pierlisa Chiodo-Steo), has a hankering for the bus driver, Carl (Robert Toczek).

With all this erotic unrest - Tennessee Williams was an early Inge mentor - the local sheriff, Will (Frederick Moore), and Bo’s elder friend, Virgil (Breen Rourke), strive to bring civility and order to the situation. But both Will and Virgil seem to be men without women.

It is ironic that in the program liner notes Inge lauds his small, Midwestern town upbringing. “People who grow up in small towns get to know each other so much more closely that they do in the cities.” But we have to wonder if Inge is whistling in the dark here, as Bus Stop is the very antithesis of this beatific vision of small town conviviality.

What we get instead is a haunting image of human isolation and loneliness, of atomism and rootlessness, where few have enduring relationships. The people here grasp at the chance of happiness wherever they can find it. And when they succeed they leave others, as Virgil says in the affecting denouement, “out in the cold”.

Stagecrafters is located at 8130 Germantown Ave. Bus Stop will run Thursdays through Sundays until Jan. 28. Reservations available @ 215-247-8881.